Washington Classics

We had a terrible winter this year in Washington. By terrible, I mean dry--no rain, no snow. But the end of March and early April gave us hope with a good deal of precipitation; much of which came as snow. About a week ago it started to get real hot for the first time this spring and with the first spring snowmelt kicking in plans were big for this weekend. However, the clouds rolled in, temps dropped, and so did the rivers and our motivations. I woke up Sat. morning and finally decided to head up to the Top Tye with Brock Gavery for a lap or two, even though it would be low. The Top Tye is the quintessential Washington run in my opinion. It was featured in one of the early twitch videos and contains many steep drops. With the water level being low we put-in at Monkey Cage and ran took out above alpine falls. We had an energetic but slower pace on the first lap, often hiking back up to repeat several drops. Getting a quick ride up for lap 2 we went for the Mad Bombing (an lvm term I have come to love) pace. I was having so much fun in my new Jefe on lap two hitting huge boofs--I swear that boat can fly. After such a good day our motivation was back and we started making plans for Sunday, but first a quick detour to a new creek a visual check on the level.

We hit the road for the Clear Fork of the Cowlitz (arguably, Washington's best creek) Sunday morning. The gauge was showing it on the low side (1800 cfs), but we knew other people were headed that direction for the Ohanepecosh, and if there was water in the Clear Fork we were hoping to convince them of our plan. Once at the take-out we decided there was just enough water to go for it, and soon enough another boater with similar intentions--Colby Mackly. Colby waited between the drops in Entrance Exam (three waterfalls stacked on top of each other), but not much after that. It was a serious day of Mad Bombing as we blizted the Clear Fork in 2 hrs, 9 min.....so fun! This is a creek everyone should have at the top of their lists.